Why is my website not appearing Google?

Your site is not correctly Search Engine Optimised for effective exposure in Google's search engine results.

In this article we will cover the process of getting your website actively submitted and tracked into the Google Search engine. (For further advice on getting your site correctly Search Engine Optimised you might want to check out another of my articles here).

Worth noting: When getting your site listed in Google, a common action that follows is that your website is automatically indexed into all the other common search engines such as Yahoo and Bing. This means that your website will have full exposure for search results across all major search engines, and not just Google.

So the first step towards getting your website tracked is...

1. Check that your site is not already being listed in Google

There may well be the possiblity that your site is already being actively listed by Google, and you simply can't find it using a straight forward keyword search. The most obvious course of action is to check to see if your website is not already tracked in the Google search engine listings.

You can to do this by typing the following into Google's Search Bar:

site:yourwebsiteaddress.co.uk

For example if you enter the following into the Google Search Bar:

site:karlbowers.co.uk

You will see a list of all my website pages for karlbowers.co.uk that are currently tracked by the Google Search Engine.

2. Submit your website address to Google

Once you are at this page just type in your website URL address into the field provided.

For example if I was to submit this website I would simply enter: karlbowers.co.uk into the field box provided.

The process can take anywhere from several days to a few weeks for Google to submit and process your request, so the best thing to do is to use the ' site:yourwebsiteaddress.co.uk ' technique explained above in step one of this article, to keep checking for activation of website pages in Google's search engine listings.

3. Submit your business details into Google's ' Places for Business ' listings.

By adding your business details in Google's ' Places for Business ' listings you can get the following benefits:

On submission of your business details, Google will automatically pickup your website address and index your site (providing you fill out the ' website address ' field in your business details).

Once Google has received your details and your business listing is activated, your business details will come up in relevant Google search engine results.

Your business is also geographically listed in Google Maps too, so potential customers and existing clients can find your location of business.

Of course for various reasons you may not want to have your business actually listed in Google Business listings, in this case refer to step two detailed above and simply submit your website address.

4. Get back links from a website that is already listed in Google.

A quicker way to get your website tracked and listed in Google is to get back links from other website owners.

A ' back link ' is basically a website link that is added to another site and points directly back to your website address.

Theoretically you can aim to get a backlink from any website that is actively listed in Google, but from a more long-term perspective (ie. once your site is listed in Google) it's better to focus your time and energy on getting backlinks that will help your website gain effective Search Engine Results. This can be achieved by following these guidlines:

Aim to get backlinks from other relevant websites in your industry.

Avoid wasting time and energy in getting general business directory links - these tend to be non-industry specific and not very helpful in long term effective search results for your website.

If possible write blog articles on your website that will ' encourage ' third-party websites (such as community forums and news sites) to make reference links back to the articles on your website.

By the following the above pointers, the third-party websites that back-link to your website will be more ' industry specific ' and help with providing effective search results to increase visitor traffic to your website.

To summarise:

By following the 4 steps detailed above you should get your website actively listed in Google and other search engines. Once this is achieved your next step will be to ensure that your website is correctly structured which you can read about here and professionally Search Engine Optimised (which I will be writing a further article about so stay tuned!).